Website to find groups of foodies near you

I love cooking and exploring different cuisines. Unfortunately, it is hard to find others who also love it near me so we could go out and try out different foods or even cook together. So, I am currently building a website to help people find groups near them who meet regularly to just enjoy food together. If that sounds interesting, check it out here: www.webelong.xyz/food
And let me know your thoughts. Would welcome positive and negative feedback.

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Hi, looks like an interesting concept. But when I clicked on “Find your Foodie Groups here”, I got this reply: “Sorry, we’re not ready for you yet!” So is this still a concept site? What will be the next step?

Yup! I am currently developing it with a team and will launch it in July as a beta test. If you would like to be in that test, sign up on the list!

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Much as I think this a good idea, I suspect its days are in the past, rather than the future. I say this in the knowledge that the likes of many local food forums have died in recent years, being replaced by Facebook groups and the like.

Welcome to this small but friendly forum, by the way.

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Thanks for the welcome! Probably one of the friendliest forums I have seen.
As to your comments, that’s true. Although, how many times have you heard of people on facebook groups meeting in person regularly and actually develop connections? Not many that I have seen at least. You may be right though. That’s why I wanted to experiment and gauge the interest.

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Interesting…so how will it work? I want to try a new restaurant in a couple of weeks, I create an event for the place and day and then people who are interested can RSVP? Then we all meet?

Follow up question, how did you find us here?

Rarely.

I’m not on Facebook so am not part of that culture but there was a such a foody group in my city. Most of time they shared recommendations but I think there were occasional meet-ups. I know a couple of no longer very active forums where there would also be local meet-ups. But, no it’s not common that there’s face-to-face meetings.

But my point, which I didnt really develop, is that whilst those food obsessives are still out there, they’ve found new ways to be in touch with each other and I’m not convinced you have a formula for bringing them to your site. I wish you well, of course, as a website based platform is much more open than a Facebook group or Twitter.

This is subject to change based on feedback. But currently, you sign up and join a group online, then you as a group decide what to try out that week, then you all meet up and enjoy the food, then repeat.

That’s fair! Hoping to find that formula to bring people over. Thanks!

What distinguishes this from meetup.com?

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I’m sure you know this exists in a super fast way using IGram and WhatsApp where friends are already sharing within doors let alone blocks of each other tied to restaurants and other food joints, events, popups, fests and trucks. I use several accts myself.

Welcome to HO!

Most of the distinguishing factor is that these groups are meant to be smaller in size and more intimate. The second distinguishing factor is that users are encouraged to get to know each other online then meet each other in person/video. I am not sure if that is enough of a distinction for Belong to be effective in making a dent. So yeah its a work in progress.

Interesting so people whatsapp forward food events to a friend chain and people show up in person?

Yes and coordinate thru IGram in real time as well.

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Meetup group sizes are determined by the organizers - they can be small or large. I’m just curious what void you believe exists that your proposed site can fill.

There doesnt actually need to be a void, only a different “feel” that attracts people. After all, many of us are on this site because we stopped liking the feel of another place.

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Yeah that’s fair. So here’s my thinking. 1/2 of Americans are lonely at various points in their life for an extended period of time. The solution is to bring people together face to face because that does a much better job than interacting online according to a bunch of studies and small programs already in place. The hypothesis is that most people want to meet others and get to know each other but there’s currently a convenience and comfort barrier which meetup tries to solve. Although, meetup only has 35 million users, a lot of which are not active. So either the hypothesis is wrong or us and meetup are missing something. My teams insight is that if we get groups to smaller sizes and get them to converse online before meeting up that’ll reduce the barriers for most people. Therefore, we’re testing to see if that’s accurate and to find the missing puzzle. Lmao that’s a lot but does that make sense?

Point taken. (Although that void could conceivably be "food site whose moderation policies I agree with.) And there are sites I simply hate the look of, like Facebook, and won’t visit for that reason.

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Yeah agreed! Just gotta figure out if that feel need is there for a lot of people

I wonder if you’d have any luck with a site that introduces people via Zoom meetings and then transitions to in-person meetings. Times being what they are, and all.

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